Conjunction of Venus and Mercury

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 7°41' to the south of Mercury.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 6° above the horizon at dawn.

Venus will be at mag -4.1 in the constellation Cancer, and Mercury at mag -1.0 in the neighbouring constellation of Gemini.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Mercury around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 07h58m00s 13°14'N Cancer -4.1 55"2
Mercury 07h58m00s 20°56'N Gemini -1.0 5"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 15° from the Sun, which is in Cancer at this time of year.

The sky on 30 Apr 2026

The sky on 30 April 2026
Sunrise
06:01
Sunset
19:34
Twilight ends
21:07
Twilight begins
04:29


Waxing Gibbous

99%

14 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:29 11:53 18:18
Venus 07:31 14:39 21:47
Moon 19:04 00:22 05:36
Mars 04:59 11:17 17:34
Jupiter 10:28 17:36 00:45
Saturn 04:46 10:53 16:59
All times shown in PDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Related news

18 May 2079  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
07 Oct 2079  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
08 Oct 2079  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
24 Dec 2080  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Share